The Dark Communion (The Midnight Defenders) (30 page)

She shrugged. “A few minutes at best. Especially on something that big.”

As it reached the far end of the cave, the dragon began to drip fire from the corners of its mouth, turned a mad arc in the air, and aimed for us again. Nadia and I leapt away as the column of flame split the ground between us in a narrow trench.

“Fuck,” I said.

“What do we do?” Nadia asked.

“If he circles again can you take out his wing?”

“I guess.”

“We need a little better than I guess.”

“Give the kid a break, Swyftt,” came Finnegan’s voice. He stumbled over to us, the blaze from Brom’s children backlighting him into a silhouette. He held his head.

“Welcome back,” I said. “And the others?”

“Passed out,” came the answer. “From what I could see.” I caught the flash of his white teeth in the dim light. “How do we hit this thing?”

“You don’t,” I said. “Let Nadia and I handle the dragon. I need you to see if you can wake the others. If you can’t, get them clear of the fire.”

Finnegan looked like he was going to protest, but stopped. Instead, he said, “Okay. Right,” and he moved back toward the growing flames.

Elensal circled for another pass.

“Get ready,” I told Nadia.

I could feel the wind against my face a heartbeat before the smoke and fire shot between us again. I took aim with Grace and fired a bolo round at one wing as Nadia’s glowing red hands released two more blasts at the other.

It tried to pull up to circle again, but the wings didn’t respond. Instead, it collided with the back wall and collapsed on its head.

I looked back toward the priest, saw him dragging Anderson to a nearby building. The fire was spreading. I looked at Nadia. “Go help Finnegan.”

“Are you serious? You can’t…”

“Go!” I snapped. “It’s down. I can handle it.”

She gave a heavy sigh and jogged off, reluctantly.

I stalked up to the downed beast and chambered two more bolo rounds. I was maybe twenty feet from it when it shook and writhed, shifted until it found its feet and was able to get them underneath itself again. Slowly, it stood, and the one malicious eye focused on me.

I charged.

Elensal moved faster than I could register. His tail struck across my waist and flipped me onto my back, leaving me breathless and gasping for air. My entire body ached and writhed, and as it neared and stood over top of me, all I could think of was that I would finally get the rest I so badly needed.

I closed my eyes, could smell the hot sulfur of its breath.

Volcano steam puffed against me, and I turned my head to the side, opened my eyes and gasped for air. There was Grace, not three feet from me. I just had to stretch.

I felt the weight of its leg against my chest, light at first, then my breathing became harder, shorter, and the weight grew and sagged against me. I tried to ignore the pain and reached with my arm, tried to wrap my fingers around the grip. I held out hope that I could put a single shot through its eye socket and into its brain before the dragon knew what was happening.

The problem with that plan was that Elensal wasn’t stupid. It turned and saw my arm, my fingers scrambled across the bricks, their tips just tickling Grace’s handle. The dragon roared, and shifted its weight from my chest, giving me the freedom I needed to grab hold of the gun. My fingers latched around the handle, and I spun the barrel around.

The forepaw sprang down on the middle of my arm. There was a sharp crack, and fire coursed through my arm from fingertips to shoulder. I screamed.

It lifted its other taloned hand and brought it to my chest, tracing down my stomach as the reptilian lips smiled sadistically at me, watching, savoring my expression.

I felt a razor-heat and bone-cold in my gut and heard Nadia’s voice screaming my name. Smelled sulfur as Elensal leaned its huge, flat head in close and bared its dagger fangs.

.

37

Two brown streaks leapt over me with a chorus of angry growls, and the dragon’s presence began to diminish.

Nadia fell at my side in a harried rush, propped me up against her knees so I could just see what was happening. I was too weak to respond, too weak to maybe even fully register what was happening. Yet I watched as Nadia held me, sobbed and shook with her arms wrapped tight around me.

Two Rhodesian Ridgebacks clung to the neck of the beast. Elensal roared fiercely, threw its head back, roared, and backed away, shaking like a wet dog. Thai and Taboo clung like leeches the whole time.

An arrow split the air with precision and hit the beast in its good eye, blinding it completely. Ape’s Groundskeeper, Crestmohr, hurtled from a tall window and landed in a cloud of dust and glory somewhere between me and the sightless beast.

The dragon shook the hounds loose, and the two dogs rolled through the dirt and debris, the ash filtering through the air from the pyre. They rebounded quickly and snapped back, went for its hind legs, tore the fabric of its wings.

Crestmohr rushed the beast, bolt after bolt flying from the massive, repeating crossbow he held, screamed like a berserker, and drove Elensal back like wounded cattle.

Nadia shook harder and cried louder. “Jono,” she sobbed. “Oh God. I can’t believe you, you… You’re so stupid. What were you thinking?” She rocked as she held me and continued to chant and cry in a mantra as if by sheer will alone she might save me.

“You can’t do this to me,” she said, and her voice was laced with raw, cracking emotion. “Don’t do this. I can’t lose you, goddammit. Do you hear me? I’ve already lost one father. Jono, I can’t lose you, too. You’re all I have left. Hang in there. You have to hang in there.”

Any other words she might have said were drowned as her tears came more forcefully. Her muscles tightened around me, holding me close, closer than I’d ever been held. There was something in her quiet desperation, her determination to hold on.

She looked up and called, “APE!!”

Ape didn’t hear her. Sword in hand, he leapt to Crestmohr’s side, slicing, hacking, cutting, the amaranthine light blazed in the cave, sparked and ignited against the armored scales of the beast. He was a blur of arms and steel and light and feral barking.

Peters staggered to her feet in a daze, shook her head and fell against a nearby wall. She massaged the heel of her palm against her forehead. She watched the dogs howl and snap with a certain look of confusion, saw them back the dragon away one step, then another. From the dust at her feet, she salvaged Glory and emptied the rest of her ammo in a shower of sparks and a chorus of rapid beats.

Bullets sparked like flint mosquitoes across its hide, and the purple blaze of the ancient sword branded its mark like fire in a thousand burning marks apparently no more deep or annoying than paper cuts. Elensal didn’t notice anything but the Ridgebacks; it swatted at the dogs, thrashed its tail wildly, and spewed clouds of flame that hung in the air like mustard gas. One giant paw connected like a heavy club against the side of Taboo’s head, sent the pup rolling in a whimper.

Finnegan roared out of the shadows, his Colts firing like a drum roll.

Elensal swept Peters’ legs out from under her with its tail.

Thai lunged at the dragon, pounced atop its flat head, and sunk its teeth to the gums in the softer tissue around its eyes.

The head fell forward heavily, slammed the dog against the old brick road, and Thai bounced into the air with a rhythm and a pop and fell near Peters’ feet. There was a sudden, sharp intake of breath, and the flame that followed was hot enough to turn the sand between the bricks underfoot into glass.

Peters gave out a scream of agony and caught fire like a Yule log.

Finnegan ran for her, but as he neared, the ammunition in one of his guns ignited, and a brilliant flair of light leapt at his eyes. He fell to the ground in anguish and grabbed his face, which was little more than a sizzle of blisters and wet dough. Ape caught him as he fell, but Elensal didn’t let up, charged, threw razored talons out before it.

The Chinook leapt in front of it, fired bolts from the hip and cried out in mad defiance. The claws hit the brick, and the dragon shook its head in a harsh shiver, snorted and backed up once more.

“Is he okay?” Crestmohr called to Ape.

There was a heavy moment where Ape didn’t say anything. Instead, he just lowered the shuddering priest to the ground.

Then he rejoined the groundskeeper. Ape rent the air before him with his sword. The Chinook held his crossbow up in the image of a cross. Elensal couldn’t see the symbol to know to be wary of it, but there was something else at work, some kind of ancient magic, that cowed the beast and sent it sprawling back, shying from its attackers. Head bowed, it shook and snorted, took one step away, then another.

“Ape!” Nadia cried again.

And I slipped away.

I was somewhere else entirely, swimming in blackness, staring up at the distant twinkling that part of me took to be stars and another part understood to be the private heavens of the saints. I felt a warmth spill across me, spread over me, and for a moment the pain was gone. It occurred to me that if the specks of light really were heaven, I’d never reach them in time.

I was so tired, and there was nothing to distract me anymore. I closed my eyes and welcomed the quiet, serene bliss. I thought of Anna. So many years ago, I clutched her little body to mine and rocked and prayed to any god that would listen. There were so many sleepless nights where she cried because something hurt and I held her and wished somehow to take the pain away.

I couldn’t help but think, as I drifted, that maybe Anna, in her passing, had seen exactly this same thing.

There was a fleeting moment where I felt nothing but relief, understood what was happening, that I was dying. I felt the warmth of joy I hadn’t known for years, a sense of fulfillment and purpose, and thought, “Daddy’s coming, Anna. Daddy’s coming.”

But there was a voice from somewhere close, soft and still, that said, “Not yet.”

I saw Adam Gables. He stood over top of me, studied my face, head cocked to the side. He said nothing, and nothing but darkness surrounded him. There was no light, only those flecks a million miles away, yet, somehow, I saw him with perfect clarity.

He smiled at me, understanding in his eyes, a look that seemed to say he understood me without ever even knowing me. He touched a finger to my forehead. And was gone.

Something pulled me. A tug on the nape of my neck grabbed hold of me and pulled me backward, fast and hard, and the flecks of light were sucked away like water spiraling down a drain, replaced with the faces of other children, girls and boys ranging in age from two to ten. One with sandy brown hair and freckles on her nose. Another with short blonde hair and glasses. A fraillooking boy, head completely bald, eyebrows shed, and ears slightly bigger than natural. And it went on. Hundreds of faces, maybe thousands, paraded around me, scrolling as if on a marquee. Most of them I didn’t recognize, but every so often I saw one I knew: Julie Easter, Toby Emmerich, James Wright. And every one of them smiled at me.

I stood there, looking in to the eyes of so many innocents, felt the pain return in my arm, in my side. Felt something else as well, bubbling up: something pure and feral and angry.

I knew, the way you understand things in dreams, that the star lights had not been heavens, but these faces. These were the victims of Brom: past, present, and future. Children whose lives were snuffed out like candles in the night. Or would be. And the ones not yet victim numbered into the tens of thousands, multiplied like rabbits before my eyes. The casualties to come were endless. If Brom wasn’t stopped.

As I watched their faces, the pain in my body grew until I doubled over, screamed in pain, and fell to my knees.

All around, voices taunted me, assaulted me. Among them, Brom’s in that cold, malicious laughter, pronounced himself an undefeated god.

Adam Gables said, “Not yet.”

Then Eric’s voice said, “If anyone could help, it’s you.”

Quietly, I answered. “I’m tired. And I’ve failed. I’m done with this.” I had to grit my teeth for the pain. “You can all just piss off.”

Silence for a few, long heartbeats, and then a still, small voice – either in the back of my mind or borne on the wind – said, “You can’t give up.”

The faces of the children marched before me, and I dared to gaze into their hollow eyes and ask, “What am I supposed to do?”

“Mr. Swyftt,” came another voice, and Adam stood next to me.

I looked him in the eyes and said, “I’ve failed you.”

Gently, he shook his head. “Not yet.” There was a warmth that defied his years, oozed from his every pore and hung about him like a warm rain. I shook my head, but his fingers found my chin. Held my face in his hand gently, looked into my eyes. “You can’t keep running, Mr. Swyftt. Don’t you see that I need you?” He motioned to the faces scrolling around us. “That all of these children need you?”

“I can’t help them,” I said. “I can’t help anyone. I couldn’t save my daughter. There’s no fucking way…I can’t.”

I felt so weak. I sounded so weak.

“Kid…”

And yet I heard Alara’s voice from decades ago pleading in a broken, desperate voice, “You don’t give up on her like that. There’s gotta be something. There’s just GOT to be…”

“No,” I said and felt the burning in my eyes as the tears blurred my vision. “There’s no hope in Atlantis.” I shook my head. “Not this time.”

Her voice echoed from so far away. “Let’s go. Let’s really, really go.”

I felt Adam’s eyes on me, studying me for a moment before he said, “I’m here, Mr. Swyftt. I’m very close. Don’t give up. Not yet.”

“Where are you?” I said.

“Close,” Adam said. “With your daughter.”

I felt my entire body prickle with electric light.

“Anna’s here, Mr. Swyftt.”

.

38

My eyes opened.

Ape and Nadia were bent over me. She cried, and both his hands were pressed against my chest where he’d been administering CPR. Despite Nadia’s tears, she said, “It’s not your time. You can’t go yet.”

The warmth of where I’d been faded, replaced by the cold of the Underground, the hard brick under my arse, the smooth, moist cheek pressed against my own.

“Nadia,” I said. My voice was hoarse, dry. “You can fucking let go.”

She sniffled, but lightened her grip on me, allowed me to look in her red, puffy eyes. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

I sat up, pushed myself away from her. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay.”

“You…Jono?” Her tears stopped, and the ghost of a smile swept across her face. But as she reached for me, she began to weep again.

“Not now,” I said. “We still have a job to do. Help me up.”

She stood wearily, blotted her eyes with her fingers, stared down at me, but made no motion to help.

“Jono,” Ape said. “You…don’t need to push yourself. You were…I mean, my god, your heart stopped.”

“Fucking help me up,” I said forcefully, and they each took a hand, pulled me to my feet slowly.

“You lost so much blood, you need to rest. I’m amazed you’re even awake right now,” Ape said.

I ignored him and pulled my t-shirt up, looked at the wound in my side. It was deep and dark and burned like fuck, bleeding light but free and oozing a translucent puss. I might have been dead. I probably should have been dead.

“What happened?” Nadia asked.

For a moment, my mind went blank, then remembered Adam Gables, remembered the words he said. I looked around frantically. “No time,” I said. “I’ve gotta find Adam. I’ve gotta find Anna.”

“Anna?” Nadia asked. She looked at Ape. “He must have lost a lot of blood.”

Grace lay on the ground nearby, and I moved to her. My right arm was completely numb and buzzed with dull pain and stinging needle pricks. I couldn’t move my fingers. “Fuck.”

I grabbed the gun with my left hand and strapped her onto my leg.

I heard a loud roar and spun to see Elensal flat against the buildings. Its wings beat against the huge, grey brick walls, blocks of concrete rained down against it. A man with shaggy white hair and broad shoulders stood before it, held up a heavy, wooden crossbow. Just behind and at either side were large, brown Rhodesian Ridgeback hounds, their hackles raised and dark crimson stained their bared fangs.

I heard Finnegan cry out in pain, clutching his face in both hands, rocking himself on his back not too far away. Ape moved to him, but shot me a warning look, as if to say, “Take it easy and don’t be stupid.”

“What the fuck is the groundskeeper doing here?” I asked Nadia.

“I invited him,” she said. “I tried to tell you outside, but you got distracted.” She must have noticed the look on my face and said, “Crestmohr saved your life, Jono. He saved all of us. If he hadn’t shown up when he did…”

“Where are the others?” I asked.

I spun around, looked among the buildings of the buried avenue, the flames of the pyre of child-fuckers still blazing hotly, providing enough light to see.

“They’re safe,” she said. “They’re in one of the buildings, out of the way.”

“In one of the buildings?” I said. I thought about that a moment. “Yeah. That makes sense. I’ve gotta find them.”

“They’re safe,” she said again, paying more attention to Crestmohr and the dragon. They’d worn it down. Its movements were sluggish and slow, but its taloned paws swung with the same angered intensity.

Elensal roared and stomped the ground in front of it. The alligator tail lifted into the air, swung out toward one of the dogs, and threw itself against the façade of the building behind it, sent brick and rubble and debris into the air.

The Chinook dropped his crossbow in favor of covering his eyes, ducked his head, and took several steps back. One of the dogs leapt at Crestmohr, pushed him out of the way just as a cyclopean brick threatened to flatten him, cracked the brick street instead.

With one last look to me, Nadia lit her hands in a red mist of energy, and Ape joined her with his sword, the blade glowing brighter than I’d seen, which meant Brom had to be near.

I turned. There, in the darkened entrance to one of the old buildings, a cloaked figure in a top hat disappeared into an open doorway.

It wasn’t easy, but I hobbled after him. One arm hung lifelessly at my side, the other pulled Grace from her holster. My side burned with every step, and the pain threatened to bring me to my knees. I ignored it as best I could and pressed through it. “Daddy’s coming, Anna.”

I reached the doorway in a half-limp, fell against the side of the frame and took a moment to catch my breath. The room was dark, but I could just make out the halo of light around a closed doorway ahead.

I pulled myself away from the wall, took a few steps and staggered again. The fingers on my left hand tightened around Grace’s pistol-grip, and the ones on my right sutured themselves loosely across the open wound in my side that oozed, warm and throbbing, against my palm.

At the end of the hallway, I bent my shoulder into the darkness of the halo’s center and was surprised to find that the door opened inward, silently and without much resistance, to a quiet, well-lit room. I expected a dirty, empty brick shell with a cot or a gathered nest of tattered newspaper clippings, perhaps a utility closet. I didn’t expect the backstage dressing room of a Vaudeville show.

Sheer and velour curtains draped along the walls, ran across the ceiling like banners in a throne room, ivory and deep royal purple, magenta and lime green, a patchwork of tapestry. In some places, the cloth was as thick as a comforter, others as spidery thin and diaphanous as webbing.

In one corner stood an old makeup table with a three-foot oval mirror, cracked down the middle and surrounded by nearly a dozen light sockets, only half of them glowing with naked, baseball-sized bulbs. The wood of the table was dusty, marred with age, deep, dark rivets chiseled into the grain of its surface.

In other areas of the room, I saw an old wardrobe, scarred with the black smudges of some ancient fire and a costume trunk bursting with brightly colored fabrics. Fancy, dark wood chairs stood at irregular intervals along the walls, their burgundy and gold-patterned cushions split and gushing plumes of white, whipped stuffing. On every surface, and even scattered across most of the floor, were lit candles of every size and thickness.

As far as I could tell, the room was empty but for my broken reflection in the make-up mirror. I took a few steps toward the little table.

Scattered chaotically across the top of it were powder brushes, mirrored compacts, and generic theater masks in plastic and plaster: the white half-mask of the Phantom of the Opera, the happy Comedy mask iconic of the theater, and a crying clown, the left eye smashed through and jagged as if done by a small fist or a little hammer.

I set Grace down on the table and slowly took the clown face in my left hand, turned it over. I felt a presence, knew I wasn’t alone in the room, but didn’t turn to look.

Even as I pretended to study the mask, I felt his influence snake gently through the room, unseen, like oily tendrils, felt it prickling along my flesh, winding its way around my legs, my arms, my neck.

“I’m not fucking afraid of you this time,” I said, my voice calm.

I heard his footsteps before I saw him and looked from the clown face to the mirror. He stood behind me, silently.

Brom was taller than me, maybe six-five, draped in a long, tattered grey trench coat. I couldn’t see his feet in the mirror, but his stained and torn navy dress slacks were tied at the waist with a length of electrical cord. He was bare-chested, his skin the color of dairy creamer, and his rib bones were clearly visible.

He wore the top hat I’d seen, the chimney of it crushed on the side like a tin can, the lid punched through and flapping open like the mouth of a tea kettle. Beneath the brim of the hat and framing his head were greasy strands of black hair, thick like tentacles and just as wavy. Over his face he wore the Tragedy mask, dark triangle eyes and a large frown.

I watched him in the mirror, expected him to move, to attack, to speak, but he remained silent, watched me, as still and calm as a tombstone. “Give me the fucking boy,” I said.

“I know who you are, Jonothan Swyftt,” came the answer. “And I know why you are here.” For a moment, I heard the voice only in my head, and then it spoke out loud, the same eerie baritone that spoke through Arthur in the sporting goods shop, that spoke to Adam Gables on the playground. “This is the holiest of holies. You are not welcome here.”

In the mirror, his head moved slightly, and I narrowed my eyes. “Give me the boy, and I’ll leave.”

“Adam Gables is here.” The curtains to my left parted, and I spun to see Adam, face blank and sedated.

I moved to him and said, “Are you okay? Where’s Anna?”

Adam lifted his head slightly and looked me in the eyes. Brom’s head moved in sync with Adam’s. Then the boy said, “Adam Gables is safe.” It wasn’t the voice I’d expected to hear; it was Brom’s.

I grabbed Grace from the table and spun to the Bogey, lifted the rifle to his breastbone, the barrel inches from his chest, and said, “Get out of the kid’s head.”

Adam Gables laughed, long and hollow, and I pulled the trigger.

From that close, the bolo round should have split him in half, but it didn’t even break the skin. It wrapped around him twice, held his arms to his sides, and the laughter continued.

In a motion that looked half flex and half shrug, he snapped the steel cable and grabbed the barrel of the gun, twisting his wrist to the side, and Grace leapt from my hand. Casually, he tossed her over his shoulder.

“You insult me,” Adam said in a low growl, but I didn’t look at him. I stared coldly into the black triangle eyes of Brom’s mask. “You come in to my holy place. You, a wretch, who are unworthy to eat of my scraps. How do you make demands of a god?”

“God?” I scoffed. There was a hard, bitter edge to my voice. I grabbed the fringes of his coat with my good hand. “You don’t come close to the gods I’ve gone up against. You don’t hold a candle to the fuckers I’ve taken down.” There was a low rumble, like the growl of an angry dog, echoing in the throat of the boy at my side. “If you’re such a fucking, all-powerful god, you piece of shit, then why do you have to control your followers with jewelry?” I looked around the room, motioning to the colored fabrics, the second-hand furniture, and I couldn’t help but say, “This entire existence is a show.”

“Get out,” Adam said.

“Not until I get my daughter.”

He laughed.

I caught a blow on my chin and spun. Brom stepped forward, raised both fists, a glint of light reflecting from something shiny on his left hand – the Ring of Solomon – and hit me again, again, again.

Either the room spun, or my head did. I lost my orientation and toppled over onto an old, tattered and stained Persian rug. As soon as I landed, Brom’s foot caught my stomach in a sharp thrust, bounced me upward, coughing and sputtering.

“So this is the knight that comes to face my dragon?” Adam screamed. The boy took one step away from me, as the white hands of Brom grabbed me and lifted me into the air. “This is the avenger of children?” Cold laughter flooded over me, thick and heavy and wet. He swung me backward, then I was airborne. My hands flailed weakly before me, navigated the sheer fabrics that parted before me as Brom hurled me into the air.

I landed in the darkness, somewhere beyond the pretty fabrics and the soft glow of candles and could feel the aching in my body, the dull, constant throbbing. Wetness and warmth crowned my head. I couldn’t feel one of my legs, and the other buzzed with fire and the prickling of a thousand needles.

Through my half-cracked eyes, I could just see the low brick wall that I lay against and managed to get my forearm on top of it, my elbow resting against the cold stone.

The only light came from the candles behind me, and as Brom approached, his shadow eclipsed the rest of the room until all I could see was darkness, all I could feel was despair.

“I will teach you to fear me,” he said.

“Give me…my daughter,” I said, my breaths came in short, painful gasps. It hurt to swallow and my mouth had the bitter iron taste of blood.

There was more cold laughter, then a voice said, “Look down.”

My glance fell to the floor, to the stone on which my arm rested, and just beyond it I saw light dancing in long, rippling waves.

As I watched, the darkness began to glow, and from somewhere deep below me, a light, soft and sweet like the flickering flame of a candle, sparked to life.

The stone on which I lay was one in a ring that surrounded a pool. Below the water’s surface – and I couldn’t tell how far below – the light flickered. It was beautiful, warm and inviting, and as I watched it, entranced by it, the light filled the length of the entire pool, maybe five or six feet across, and more light began to spill out of it. At its center, I could just make out a darkened figure, blurry at first, but gradually moving into focus.

Brom stood over me, said nothing, and I didn’t look at him. I was mesmerized by the figure in the pool.

A girl, no older than six, sat in darkness. Her long brown hair hung like silken curtains on her shoulders, and she wore a green dress of crushed velvet, a sash tied around her waist and another bow, much larger, was tied in the small of her back. She wore crisp, white stockings and black baby-doll shoes. Her eyes were closed, and while she wasn’t smiling, there was an ethereal peace about her. She looked so much like her mother it took my breath away.

Anna.

As the surface of the water rippled, the darkness around her took on the appearance of a city park: beautiful flower arrangements and neatly groomed trees, bright, emerald grass. She sat on a park bench, her hands folded in her lap, her head bowed gracefully against her chest.

I wanted to reach into the water, to pull her out, to touch her, but I didn’t dare move. I feared if I broke the surface of the water or even blinked, that Anna would be lost to me again. I couldn’t risk that.